"laughing, singing, and drinking," as they would do at
setting out for a picnic in the country. Three or four of them are known
by name--one brandishing a sword, and another, the notorious Theroigne.
Madeleine Chabry Louison, who is selected to address the King, is a
pretty grisette who sells flowers, and, no doubt, something else, at the
Palais-Royal. Some appear to belong to the first rank in their calling,
and to have tact and the manners of society--suppose, for instance,
that Champfort and Laclos sent their mistresses. To these must be added
washerwomen, beggars, bare-footed women, and fishwomen, enlisted for
several days before and paid accordingly. This is the first nucleus,
and it keeps on growing; for, by compulsion or consent, the
troop incorporates into it, as it passes along, all the women it
encounters--seamstresses, portresses, housekeepers, and even respectable
females, whose dwellings are entered with threats of cutting off
their hair if they do not fall in. To these must be added vagrants,
street-rovers, ruffians and robbers--the lees of Paris, which accumulate
and come to the surface every time agitation occurs: they are to be
found already at the first hour, behind the troop of women at the
Hotel-de-Ville. Others are to follow during the evening and in the
night. Others are waiting at Versailles. Many, both at Paris and
Versailles, are under pay: one, in a dirty whitish vest, chinks gold and
silver coin in his hand.--Such is the foul scum which, both in front and
in the rear, rolls along with the popular tide; whatever is done to stem
the torrent, it widens out and will leave its mark at every stage of its
overflow.

The first troop, consisting of four or five hundred women, begin
operations by forcing the guard of the Hotel-de-Ville, which is
unwilling to make use of its bayonets. They spread through the rooms
and try to burn all the written documents they can find, declaring that
there has been nothing but scribbling since the Revolution began.[1433]
A crowd of men follow after them, bursting open doors, and pillaging
the magazine of arms. Two hundred thousand francs in Treasury notes are
stolen or disappear; several of the ruffians set fire to the building,
while others hang an abbe. The abbe is cut down, and the fire
extinguished only just in time: such are the interludes of the popular
drama. In the meantime, the crowd of women increases on the Place de
Greve, always with the same unceasing cry,